


We are Each our Own Devil

by GrellIsMyWife



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Alois Trancy Character Study, Alois ends up living in the phantomhive estate, Alois thinks hes in love with claude, Alois's Shitty Past, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Basically all the fucked up stuff that happens in canon?, Claude fucking dies by the way, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mentions of Pedophilia, She is Gay, also feat a Comprehensive List of Reasons Why Alois is Not Sleeping With Everyone, also happened here, but he just doesn't Understand Love, even though hes garbage, gay shit is good shit, get rekt, i actually prefer the manga but, i love alois, im in love with every woman in black butler, lizzies a lesbian, not yaoi cause thats a fetish genre, shes not in this yet but, so this exists, the ending of season 2 was dumb as fuck so i chose to ignore it, uhh more serious tags, we also dont support romanticizing rape/pedophile, we dont support that here, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 23:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14604465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrellIsMyWife/pseuds/GrellIsMyWife
Summary: Alois Trancy understood love. He understood need. He had long since figured out that the two were the same.*******In which, after the death of his butler and staff, Alois Trancy is offered residence at the Phantomhive Estate, from whence a friendship, albeit one unstable and inconsistent, finds a way to take root





	We are Each our Own Devil

**Author's Note:**

> hey my dudes  
> its been a full two and a half years since ive read or watched black butler, but given the fact that for the roughly three months I liked it i was /really/ into it, i have a bunch of lingering feelings.  
> im using this to vent them.
> 
> this is obviously canon divergent, in which sebastian gets that demon killer sword thing and kills claude and hannah before anything happens with alois, i guess  
> yeah i refused to rewatch any of season 2 (or one, for that matter) in prep for this fic so if stuff is wrong thats probably why. if theyre out of character, also, thats why.
> 
> idk why i wrote this. i have my APUSH exam tomorrow. procrastination.
> 
> also the title is an oscar wilde quote

Alois Trancy understood love. He understood need. He had long since figured out that the two were the same.

Luka had loved him. And he’d loved Luka. They had needed each other, the way orphaned brothers do. As Alois was the elder, Luka had relied on him all the more, and the love Luka felt for him so much greater. Great enough to convince the younger boy to make a deal with a demon. When Alois lost him, he’d been shattered.

But it wasn’t a permanent break. Alois got out of that dead town, he relied on his own self, and he no longer needed Luka. There was no sense in loving someone who was gone, because someone who was gone could offer nothing to those still alive. So Alois moved on.

The old pedophile loved him. Alois was young and beautiful and fulfilled his perverted needs. As the prettiest the old man had ever seen, Alois was showered with love and wealth and fine silk to make him even more beautiful. And it was all Alois’s doing. His beauty, his charm, his willingness that had won him these riches were all traits of his own. He didn’t need this old man; he could make any pervert give him the same. Alois took his money and his name and mourned nothing when the Earl Trancy died.

There were others, too- more men, some just a decade or so older than Alois, some far more, and, god, they loved him. Alois recognized the need in their gazes as they witnessed him. His blonde hair, thin frame, wide eyes- he was almost girlish. But he was even more promiscuous than the whores on the street and far more cheap. Many men loved him and Alois never loved a single one.

But then there was Claude.

When they’d forged their contract, Alois was sure Claude would love him. Claude wanted his soul, sure, but Alois had met several men who’d proclaimed the same. They all wanted his body, in the end. Regardless, they all needed him. They all _loved_ him.

But rather than the needy, hungry gazes he’d come to expect, all Claude’s looks held was apathy. Those cold, yellow eyes gave him _nothing._

 _But he just needs more time,_ Alois had told himself in the beginning. So he tried harder: antagonizing his butler, showing more skin, spending every moment by Claude’s side. Alois made himself as close to a demon as he could be; he hurt and hurt and took and followed after the Phantomhive boy relentlessly. It should have worked.

But the world had always been twisted against his favor. All the failed dance invitations, all the flirtation had brought nothing but more disgusted glares. Each second spent beside Claude only made Alois more dependent. And following Ciel Phantomhive didn’t make Claude respect Alois any more; no, it, for some reason, just piqued Claude’s interest in the other boy.

As the months passed, it became clear that Claude would fail to love him. Alois, on the other hand, had fallen so far in love that he couldn’t breathe. He hadn’t loved since Luka and this was so different. Luka had been a brother. Claude was- Claude was _everything_.

And all Claude needed, all he loved-

Was the _fucking_ Phantomhive.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. Claude was supposed to _his_. Alois _owned_ him. Claude was supposed to give Ciel Phantomhive to Alois, Alois was supposed to destroy Ciel, destroying the Phantomhive butler the same. And, in return, Claude would get his soul.

But he couldn’t make Claude need him. Couldn’t even make Claude want him. Alois had never been any man’s second choice, but nothing Alois did made Claude love him.

An hour before the house caught flame, he started to wonder if it was worth it to even try.

*********

Behind him, the Trancy mansion burned.

Alois had escaped the heat and the smoke and the flying silverware and the sword that had claimed the lives of his servants. He’d collapsed, the pavement scraping through his stockings and tearing into the pale skin on his knees. It ripped into the skin of his fair, uncalloused palms and drew his blood, red and pure.

He’d seen the corpses of the Hannah and the triplets marring the beautiful mansion with their mangled, demonic, dead forms. He stood by and witnessed the home where he’d lived for years go up in smoke. And, most heartbreaking, he’d watched the Phantomhive butler, with a sword that, somehow, had the power to kill demons, stab Claude through the chest.

His Claude.

The only man with whom Alois had been in love. The man who didn’t love him but might’ve, maybe, _one day_. The man who, even though he did it with a frown on his face, fulfilled Alois’s every command. The only person who’d ever truly been _his_.

And he was gone. Stolen from the world at the command of the boy he chose over Alois.

It wasn’t fucking _fair._

A long shadow covered Alois, shielding his view of the fire. Silhouetted by the still-roaring flames were two figures: Ciel Phantomhive, carried like the child he was, in the arms of his butler. Jealousy increased the potency of the rage boiling in Alois’s chest, just to be mellowed by the realization that, like Luka, like Claude, like everyone Alois loved, he too would be killed by this awful boy and his awful demon.

Maybe he’d be able to see Claude again, at least. Luka’s soul was gone, but when Alois went hell, maybe Claude be waiting there for him.

No. No he wouldn’t. If Claude made it down there, he wouldn’t waste any more time on Alois.

But, still, death wasn’t the worst option. What were the alternatives? Finding another rich pervert to pay his dues? Playing the victim and convince the bank would let him keep whatever was left of the Trancy fortune and hope Ciel Phantomhive didn’t ruin his life further? Finding another series of men who would adore him for no longer than a night?

He might as well just die.

He closed his eyes and straightened his back, wanting to be killed with the dignity he’d never been allowed to live with as an orphan, slave, and whore. But the latter list was how he’d be remembered, if he was remembered at all. He’d never had honor, the world had made that clear, but that made him want it all the more in his final seconds.

But the finishing blow never came.

Alois forced his eyes up, making contact with Ciel’s- both the bright blue one and the one marked and purple. He was pretty enough, Alois supposed, but not as pretty as Alois himself. Ciel rarely spoke with emotion, never smiled, didn’t do anything fun, from what Alois had seen. Why were these demons- both Ciel’s own and the one who was supposed to be Alois’s- so infatuated with him? What did he have that Alois didn’t?

What did Ciel do to deserve their love?

Certainly not show mercy on pathetic blonde boys in ridiculous outfits when the kill would be far more beneficial. That isn’t how a demon thinks. And Ciel was as close to a demon as any human could be.

So why was Alois still breathing?

Ciel finally spoke, but not to Alois. “Sebastian.”

“Yes, young master?”

“Bring Alois Trancy back to the Phantomhive Estate.”

Had Alois been through less that day, had he been able to feel anything enough to be curious, had he been just a bit more foolish, he would’ve asked why. But he wasn’t, so he just leaned his head down on the ground.

And he laughed.

********

Even after two weeks staying in the foreboding halls of the Phantomhive estate, Alois still couldn’t fathom why he was there. It really shouldn’t matter, he knew, and at least he was alive, but so horribly bored. He wished someone would just let him know his purpose already. But no one, aside from in brief encounters with the staff, even spoke to him.

Alois had escaped from his fit of mourning fairly quickly, because what was the point in it? Claude was dead and would stay that way regardless, and he’d never loved Alois, and now Alois was taking resident with Claude’s killers, and none of it made sense, and mourning was depressing, so what was the _point_. As he got over the stage of grief, so he got over the death wish. That left him with nothing but a pervading sense of ennui and the lingering fear that he was going to wake up with a fork through his skull.

And, god, was it boring.

There was an unspoken rule about Alois leaving the manor that was enforced by both the butler and the rest of the staff. The Phantomhive staff, unlike the late triplets and Hannah, proved themselves to be completely useless for every task besides letting Alois go off by himself. Because Alois never wanted to tag along on the Phantomhive’s inane quests for the queen or his shoe shopping or whatever else he did out there, inside he was stuck.

That almost made the death wish return.

His normal habits- hurting and seducing- were horrifically limited in those halls. Alois no longer had the luxury of servants required to serve him personally, who would willingly take the painful punishment for doing nothing wrong. In this house, though, there was no forgiveness for Alois. The butler who killed with silverware, the gardener stronger than Alois could believe, the maid who hid rifles under her skirts, the chef who stored more explosives than food. Alois didn’t understand these people more than the basic knowledge that hurting them would be suicide. And, by this point, he was fairly sure he didn’t want to die.

His mind turned to seduction, then, because that could certainly alleviate the boredom.

The butler would have been his first target, but even if he hadn’t been so objectively uninterested in Alois, he was just a bit too reminiscent of Claude for Alois’s comfort.

With that option pushed aside, he focused on the staff. First, the gardener, who was almost immediately given up on. He was two or three years Alois’s senior, but still blatantly naive. He- Finny, if Alois caught the name right- had likely never kissed someone before, let alone anything else. It seemed unfair to take that innocence from him. Not that it would be any fun, anyway; the gardener wouldn’t even know what Alois was doing.

Finny was sweet, though, if a bit clueless, and Alois almost liked him.

Almost.

He wouldn’t allow himself to truly be fond anyone keeping him trapped here.

The chef was his next attempt. The man was attractive, in a more rough, masculine way than anyone else in the house, and in the age range of Alois’s usual men. But he quickly proved to be just as useless as the gardener and, while not mean, far less sweet and- worst of all- _American_. Like the impression Alois had often got from the Americans he’d met, the chef had a tendency to blow up everything he touched, so Alois wasn’t keen on being something he touched.

Besides, blondes weren’t really Alois’s type.

The maid, too, was almost immediately crossed off the list. Alois wasn’t too interested in women, for one, and anyway, she seemed half in love with the butler. 

Alois thought she could do better.

So, every person in the only place Alois was allowed to explore had been methodically crossed off his mental list. 

No, actually; there was one more, but that was an immediate, definite _no_. The estate’s beloved young master was not on the list of people Alois would consider seducing. If he did, he would _definitely_ end up with a fork through his skull.

Besides, Alois had better things to do. Sure, Ciel Phantomhive was pretty and intelligent and apparently had some quality about his soul that made him irresistible to demons. And, yes, Alois had wanted him once, enough to forge a demonic deal around it. But that want was revenge, revenge he couldn’t enact now, no matter how much every fibre of his being begged him to. No, he didn’t want to seduce Ciel, he wanted to destroy him.

But, as loathe as he was to admit it, Ciel had helped him. He’d ordered Claude’s murder, and that of Alois’s staff, and burned Alois’s estate to the ground, but he hadn’t hurt Alois, himself. Ciel had taken him in, given him food, provided him with clothes (less revealing than his normal attire but not as bland as Ciel’s outfits, thank God). And Alois had no idea _why_.

Maybe he would kill Ciel one day. Maybe that day would come soon.

But not before Alois got his answers.

**Author's Note:**

> thats it my dudes
> 
> i mean. of the first chapter.
> 
> i already ranted enough in the tags so im going to keep this one short. Tell me what you thought pls, if i got things wrong (theres one thing im pretty sure i got wrong but im too lazy to change it) let me know- seriously i havent watched the second season in 30 months- if you liked it/hated it, etc. I just like comments man


End file.
